Hic Sunt Dracones

The New York Public Library houses a cool historical curiosity, the Hunt-Lenox Globe, which according to Wikipedia is the second or third oldest terrestrial globe still in existence. And, popular myth aside, it is also the only historical map that contains the phrase "Hic Sunt Dracones," or "here be dragons" (the Carta Marina to the left, while it contains dragons, doesn't identify them in the same way)

That's a phrase I am drawn to frequently when delving into hostile abdominal territory—patients who have an abdominal catastrophe, huge pancreatic phlegmons, or a dense thicket of adhesions from prior surgery. These are cases where we tread carefully, and quietly, trying to avoid awakening a slumbering beast … read more